Leeds Music Scene Interview
Merchandise By Jessica Thornsby
Jessica Thornsby caught up with Brad from Bolton-based Merchandise
Hello! Who am I speaking to you and what do you do in the band?
I’m Brad and I sing, play acoustic guitar, produce and co-write the songs
How would you describe Merchandise to someone who’s never heard you before?
We’re an eclectic collective producing interesting pop music with a thousand and one influences.
Merchandise have some pretty colorful artwork. What’s the story behind that?
We were re-designing the website a little while ago and we ended up agreeing that the brown white and orange thing suited our sound. Kate Wilde then did the logo and when it came to putting out the singles surrounding this album we decided to stick with it using Stevie-Lee Peacock’s cartoons. It suits us right now I think.
Merchandise spent the first ten years as a studio-only band. Why was that?
For years, me and Con just met up as often as we could to make music which we did with anything we could get our hands on. In the beginning it was weird sounds and interesting beats which got us going, we weren’t really writing songs at the time but what we were producing didn’t fit any easy categories. We moved on to developing songs with more structure but kept the odd production. We recorded everything differently and in the way we liked it which would just have made it too unwieldy to perform live without backing tapes, which we didn’t ant to do. But after a while we found that we had a great collection of songs so that, while we still record them as we see fit, we could also strip them down to the bare acoustics and perform them live but without having to worry about the technology. It’s great that we managed to deal with that difference between live and on record and we hope people enjoy that difference.
Were you apprehensive about finally playing your songs live?
Yeah. I’d been a bass player in my previous band and Con hadn’t played live for years – we’d just worked in the studio. There was a lot to learn: We weren’t sure if they would work and it took a while to settle on the instrumentation and the line-up, but now we’re very happy with how it’s all sounding!
Your sound is pretty complex. Is it a challenge, re-creating it in a live environment?
Fortunately we’ve got two great recruits in John A Stewart on bass and Matt Maher on drums which has made everything easier. We have to re-arrange songs a bit but they still sound like the same song, though some bits have to be changed or the piano has to pick up a guitar line here and there. The songs are quite straight forward and strong and can stand even without the specific production. It adds a depth to the sound to be able to produce it as an acoustic pop band and as an eclectic studio outfit.
You put out roughly one album every four years. Is it fair to say you’re perfectionists?
Well this one is going to have taken five years! We started early and just worked in the time we had. I think it’s fair to say that we believe that it’s ready when it’s ready but by the same token, if we could work full time on a new one with nothing else to worry about, I bet we could have something decent in a few months! We’re not afraid to re-do things as much as it takes but if a mistake is good, we leave it in!
You’re on the brink of completing your third album, ‘Merchandise For The Masses.’ How would you describe it?
This is our most complete record to date. Everything is about the songs which are all catchy but different in their own ways and through their own influences. It’s going to be a broad musical journey with very little fat on the songs. We’re not into showy solos or long pointless intros. There’s no filler here!
You started life as an experimental, electro recording project. How do your feel your sound has progressed since then?
Simply, we learned to write songs and once you’ve got good songs you can arrange and perform them in any way you like!
You seem to have quite an unusual set-up, with touring-only members, multi-instrumentalist recording members, and a long-standing, outside lyrical contributor. How does that all fit together?
It’s difficult in some ways but it’s great that so many talented people are happy to get involved. Roger Williams has been a friend for years and has always written lyrics and poetry. So over the years we’ve developed an understanding of what we like and he just passes the lyrics over each time he finishes a set. Some we use really quickly if we’ve got a musical idea which suits, some stay in a file and come out years later. I write quite a few of the lyrics on this album and on the stuff we’re recording for after the album, there’s one of Con’s. Rob Turner, who played drums on a lot of the tracks, and Natalie Barlow, who provided backing vocals, are talented friends who came in to help us when we needed them. John and Matt are just credited as playing live as they’ve only been in the band a short while and a lot was already recorded, but the latest tunes on the album all have them on too. Whatever we record next will have them on from the start.
You’ve described the title of your first album ‘This is Merchandise’ as being an anti-capitalist statement, and the title of second album ‘Lo-Tech Solutions To High-Tech Problems’ refers to NASA developing a pen that’d work in zero gravity, while the Russians made do with a pencil. What’s the inspiration behind the new album title?
Well this one is our attempt to make a catchy alternative pop album and at the same time it’s a nod towards mass production of product which the record industry so loves. We try to stick to the DIY ethic and the cottage industry thing that way we can put out whatever we want to.
Who would you compare yourselves to?
I think all musicians hate to compare their music, naturally enough. We’ve put a list of all the artists we’ve been compared to in our reviews on our website and that includes loads of names, some we really have no idea what they were thinking! As we get asked this a lot, the stock answers would be Badly Drawn Boy, Belle and Sebastian, Magic Numbers, The Beta Band, Postal Service. . . Obviously folk will just have to have a listen!
What’s the highlight of your career so far?
I guess it’d be getting our stuff played on the radio – that’s always great. The latest single, Listen Up! has been played on loads of stations including Radio 1 and stations in the USA and Germany. When you hear that people from far away have heard your music or have bought that 7″ white vinyl that’s been so lovingly put together, that always makes it worth it. Every time a gig goes well you get a similar feeling.
And finally, what can we expect from Merchandise in 2009?
You can expect the album and some more singles and hopefully you’ll hear a lot more from us!
